If you read my last book you know some of it takes place up in trees. That's where I'd go to be alone to read, listen to music with earbuds in my ears, think about The Big Questions in Life, and make love to Nokosee. The trees were always changing because we were constantly breaking camp in the middle of the night while on the run from Uncle Sam and his badass Army Rangers. But most of the time if I was lucky and the hammock was big and high enough over the water to support its growth, my go-to-tree was a gumbo limbo, a way cool tree if there ever was one. Now that I'm holed up in the Miccosukee Embassy seeking Sanctuary from the Feds, I make it a point to take time to meditate. It frees me from the four walls of the Embassy and puts me back in the top of my tree where the branches are swaying gently by a summer breeze. My mantra, as it was then, is Peyote Healing by Robbie Robertson of The Band, Bob Dylan's famous back-up band. Robertson's mother was a full-blooded Mohawk and he was raised on the Six Nations Reserve southwest of Toronto, Ontario which gives him rez cred for his later solo albums championing Native American life and music. Here are the lyrics for Peyote Healing which Robertson credits to the Lakota Sioux as a spirit medicine healing song:
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Atay nimichikun?
(Father, have you done this?"
Oshiya chichiyelo.
(Humbly have pity on me.)
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Wani wachiyelo. Ate omakiyayo.
(Father help me. I want to live!)
Atay nimichikun?
(Father, have you done this?"
Oshiya chichiyelo.
(Humbly have pity on me.)
9/26 Update: It appears September is the month for books on trees. The Hidden Life of Trees was released this month. Its author Peter Wohlleben was a one-time tree killer, aka a forester, until one day when he saw the light: trees have feelings. I felt this more than once while up in my trees but it's good to see its been validated by an "expert in the field." So, no, you're not crazy if you hug a tree. They appreciate it. To read a short review on the book please click here.
I remember always trying to find just the right set of branches to sit in so I could assume the lotus position, turning on the music, closing my eyes and trying not to fall out of the trees. When I got it right, I was transported out of that harsh and unforgiving world to a better place, a place by the end of the song had put a smile on my face and given me a lighter heart.
And then there was the time I heard laughter at the bottom of my tree. It was my father-in-law, the late and great founder and chief of the New Seminole, Busimanolotome Osceola. He was laughing real hard. If you read my books, you know him and I didn't see eye-to-eye on just about everything. Until I helped him shoot down a drone over the Everglades with a Stinger missile from a small Micco airplane, he never really accepted me as a member of the tribe. And let me tell you, he did everything he could to break me. But when I didn't break and saw I would stand my ground in a fight, he loved me like I was his own daughter. So now when I meditate in the Embassy, I see three faces up in my "tree:" Nokosee, Hallie, and my Micco.
Try it. See if you don't come down from your "tree" with a big fat silly smile on your face.*
*Of course, it doesn't hurt to have your "doors of perception" opened by the drug Robertson is singing about. Peyote has been the go-to-drug for most of the 500 Nations and it's been doing its job long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That said, Nokosee wouldn't allow me to touch the stuff before getting into the smoke hut/furnace so I did it drug free. When I emerged, my body had been cleansed (sweating bullets with lots of throwing up into the bonfire with the hope of putting it out), but I was still visionless (clueless, too, but that's another story). In retrospect, I wish my doors of perception had been opened through peyote and that I had had a vision because without the vision came Busi's demand that I do the "vision quest" alone in a mosquito infested swamp full of alligators and water moccasins. To this day, I believe it was just another attempt by Busi trying to break me.
BTW, Busi's favorite book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe is, for the most part, about author Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") who was one of the first users of LSD in the U.S. Wolfe tells us the idea of writing the book came to Kesey while working the night shift at the Menlo Park Vets hospital where psychedelic drugs were used to treat the patients (and to keep them in line). While on peyote, Kesey starts getting "eyelid movies... of faces he's never seen before." Including "Chief Broom." At that time Kesey didn't know any Native Americans BUT Chief Broom came to him in his vision to solve the problem of telling the story: He wouldn't tell it through Randle McMurphy's eyes (the main character) but rather through those of the Indian... "This way he could present a schizophrenic state the way the schizophrenic himself, Chief Broom, feels it and at the same time report the McMurphy Method more subtly."
9/24 Update: Just finished a new book up in my tree. On Heights & Hunger by Josh Maclvor-Andersen. I highly recommend it to anyone like me wrestling with the big questions in or out of a tree. The author is at once an arborist, a competitive tree climber (who knew), and a professor of writing, journalism, literature, and mythology at Northern Michigan University. I was initially drawn to it because it was written by a guy who knows trees, like me, and likes them too, like me. Then I was drawn to his prose and the power he wields over words as he tells his story about growing up in a Christian commune called Love Inn (gotta love that), falling away from it following his parents' divorce and then joining up with his older brother to scale trees, skydive, and lead lives of adventure. All the while trying to make sense out of life, faith, and family. Very much like my story but with far less bloodletting. And sex. But with more of a self-deprecating sense of humor.
And then there was the time I heard laughter at the bottom of my tree. It was my father-in-law, the late and great founder and chief of the New Seminole, Busimanolotome Osceola. He was laughing real hard. If you read my books, you know him and I didn't see eye-to-eye on just about everything. Until I helped him shoot down a drone over the Everglades with a Stinger missile from a small Micco airplane, he never really accepted me as a member of the tribe. And let me tell you, he did everything he could to break me. But when I didn't break and saw I would stand my ground in a fight, he loved me like I was his own daughter. So now when I meditate in the Embassy, I see three faces up in my "tree:" Nokosee, Hallie, and my Micco.
Try it. See if you don't come down from your "tree" with a big fat silly smile on your face.*
*Of course, it doesn't hurt to have your "doors of perception" opened by the drug Robertson is singing about. Peyote has been the go-to-drug for most of the 500 Nations and it's been doing its job long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That said, Nokosee wouldn't allow me to touch the stuff before getting into the smoke hut/furnace so I did it drug free. When I emerged, my body had been cleansed (sweating bullets with lots of throwing up into the bonfire with the hope of putting it out), but I was still visionless (clueless, too, but that's another story). In retrospect, I wish my doors of perception had been opened through peyote and that I had had a vision because without the vision came Busi's demand that I do the "vision quest" alone in a mosquito infested swamp full of alligators and water moccasins. To this day, I believe it was just another attempt by Busi trying to break me.
BTW, Busi's favorite book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe is, for the most part, about author Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") who was one of the first users of LSD in the U.S. Wolfe tells us the idea of writing the book came to Kesey while working the night shift at the Menlo Park Vets hospital where psychedelic drugs were used to treat the patients (and to keep them in line). While on peyote, Kesey starts getting "eyelid movies... of faces he's never seen before." Including "Chief Broom." At that time Kesey didn't know any Native Americans BUT Chief Broom came to him in his vision to solve the problem of telling the story: He wouldn't tell it through Randle McMurphy's eyes (the main character) but rather through those of the Indian... "This way he could present a schizophrenic state the way the schizophrenic himself, Chief Broom, feels it and at the same time report the McMurphy Method more subtly."
9/24 Update: Just finished a new book up in my tree. On Heights & Hunger by Josh Maclvor-Andersen. I highly recommend it to anyone like me wrestling with the big questions in or out of a tree. The author is at once an arborist, a competitive tree climber (who knew), and a professor of writing, journalism, literature, and mythology at Northern Michigan University. I was initially drawn to it because it was written by a guy who knows trees, like me, and likes them too, like me. Then I was drawn to his prose and the power he wields over words as he tells his story about growing up in a Christian commune called Love Inn (gotta love that), falling away from it following his parents' divorce and then joining up with his older brother to scale trees, skydive, and lead lives of adventure. All the while trying to make sense out of life, faith, and family. Very much like my story but with far less bloodletting. And sex. But with more of a self-deprecating sense of humor.
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